


New Arrangement

by squire



Series: Kylux Tumblr fills [5]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Blood, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, First Kiss, Graphic Description of Injuries, M/M, Major Character Injury, Post-TLJ, That's Not How The Force Works, developing feelings, possible manipulation, post-TFA
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-23
Updated: 2018-03-23
Packaged: 2019-04-07 00:32:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14069001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squire/pseuds/squire
Summary: Kylo tries to get the point across but the patient words don’t come easily to him, it’s like trying to explain the point of light to a cave creature whose eyes have atrophied. They lack common ground. In the end he settles for what always came easily to him when dealing with Hux - arguing.“But you did - unconsciously. You’ve always been using it.”Kylo discovers something new about Hux.





	New Arrangement

**Author's Note:**

> The first part of this fic was originally written as a pinch-hit for Kylux exchange event. It was since then tweaked and expanded. Also slightly influenced by the TLJ novelisation, especially by the old Imperials repeatedly calling Hux mad. I liked that, because he is.

The snow is cold but the defeat from the girl chills him more. Kylo’s pulse slows down with every breath, every trickle of blood from his wound is weaker. Warmth leaves him in crimson drops, one by one. He should get up. He should fight for his own life. But what sense if there to life without victory? Kylo’s life seems to be a line of failures, a continuous scramble for an inch forward only to fall a mile back. One failure more - a breath missed, a heartbeat skipped, blood gone still, body gone cold - shouldn’t mean much now. Maybe this one failure would finally bring him peace.

But peace was never something Kylo dealt to others while alive, so it’s only just when he’s denied it in his last moments.

There’s light coming through the shaking trees, a noise deeper and stronger than the howling of wind and cracking of the rocks: the artificial, steady roar of engines. Shadows fall long and shaky upon the snow, searching, closing on him like vultures on prey. Stormtroopers, carrying a stretcher. And behind them, their commander. Everything around him quakes and falls but Hux stands tall, hateful and proud. The destruction can’t touch him. 

Kylo wishes he wouldn't have to die with this shining example planted in front of his eyes. He struggles to tell them to leave him alone. He’s done for. Medical treatment could mend his body but his mind has already made a decision.

And then Hux is close, and his lips are moving, blue with the cold and sharp with derision. His voice has an edge of steel, a strange reverberance that pummels through Kylo’s skull and wraps itself around his core, grasping, pulling.

“You’re not dying here.”

Kylo has heard of this feeling, from theoretical point of view. He was never at the receiving end of it. The Force flows quiet and silent through Hux, no disturbance, no vortex. What’s more, even if he was a sensitive, Force compulsion works only on those weak of mind, and Kylo is anything but.

Yet he obeys. He lives.

*

The bacta wipes the worst of the damage from his body and most of those strange, suspended, dreadful moments from his memory. The turmoil of the days that come makes him push the rest into far recesses of his mind, like a bad dream.

The First Order loses terribly but the Resistance loses worse. For a while, there’s a push and pull on the fragile front of balance between the two forces, one side almost reaching for victory, then the other. But the Order is not so easily beaten. Over time, the war dwindles into occasional bursts, the Rebels turned into partizans, a nuisance that makes no change in the grand scheme of things. A sabotage here, an small insurgence there. A hope that lives only in sparks. Hux, the Supreme Leader’s right hand, deals with them as they come. Time works for their cause. 

Hux’s presence in Kylo’s life is like a Kyber crystal that takes raw energy and focuses it into a sharp-edged blade of light. If chaos was a sea storm, Hux’s mind would be the lighthouse tower sending out a beacon light to direct others. He doesn’t doubt his purpose, his technological prowess or their cause. 

Kylo doesn’t question it. He’s conflict incarnate, he can’t even imagine what it is like to have a clearly defined goal, to feel a pull in only one direction, but if he can revel in it - be it second-hand - he takes what he can.

Hux probably still hates him, but he knows what’s best for the First Order. And so they share the work and strike a tentative truce in their personal lives. For the first time in years, Kylo’s mind enjoys peace.

 

*

 

Of course, it’s then when the maybe last spasm of war catches them.

Maybe they’ve grown too complacent in their sense of security. They’re on the return journey from an inspection of a new reclam facility when their light cruiser is attacked, disabled and boarded. On any other day, Kylo alone would be enough to deal with the attackers - hells, he should be able to tear their old and rickety ship in half with just a thought. But Kylo can barely draw a breath. One lucky shot to the ship’s bridge has left him impaled on a broken console mounting, the sharp piece of metal rammed between his ribs and jutting out below his collarbone.

It’s a fitting irony that after years of destroying ship equipment, one console would finally take a revenge on him. Kylo would laugh if he wasn’t coughing up blood.

Hux has dragged him out before he could be sucked out into the vacuum of space. They find shelter in a dead end of a corridor. On the dock levels, the fight breaks out, and from the sound of it it seems that their small unit of troopers will soon be eliminated, but Hux is staying at his side. It’s a foolish thing to do.

“Go,” he gurgles around the blood. “Take a shuttle, go–”

“I am not going anywhere. I’ve activated the distress call. Help will arrive soon.” 

Hux wisely doesn’t try to remove the metal rod that spikes trough Kylo’s body - it’s the only thing preventing him from succumbing to rapid internal bleeding.

The Rebel boarding party is searching through their ship. They can hear them approaching. Shouts break through the hissing of electronics and distant explosions. It’s clear the Rebels know who they’re looking for.

“Somebody tipped them off,” Hux grits through clenched teeth. “I’ll find the traitor and tie him in front of the thermal cannon barrel, I swear–”

_ Hux, it’s too late _ , Kylo thinks. He can’t actually speak, he’s sure one of his lungs already collapsed. He tries to will the sound waves into existence with the Force but he’s too weak for that. But Hux seems to have heard anyway because he takes Kylo’s hand and squeezes it.

“This is not the end. We’ll survive this.”

_ You have to survive this _ , Kylo thinks. In his delirium, he imagines Hux can actually hear him.  _ You need to escape, the First Order needs a leader, you have to– _

“You still don’t understand, do you?” Hux gives a strange little laugh, more a shaky breath punched out of him, and then he leans over Kylo and kisses him. His lips come away smeared with blood.

There’s a gasp from around the corner. Kylo refocuses his dazed eyes behind Hux. Two Rebel scouts stand there, guns raised, frozen in a momentary surprise at the scene in front of them.

Hux scowls. His displeasure at having his first emotional moment in a decade interrupted is palpable in the air.

“What?” he snaps at them, his commanding tone as sharp as ever. “There’s nothing for you here to gape at like idiots.”

Impossibly, the pair of them stiffens even more. “There’s nothing for us here to gape at like idiots,” one of them repeats in a dull tone.

The wheezing gurgles of Kylo’s breaths stutter to a stop. For a moment, he can feel the time itself freeze. Hux stares. But - oh, he recovers quickly, and Kylo  _ loves _ him, in this moment, like he never loved anything before.

“You will turn and go away. There’s no more survivors on this ship. Your information was misleading.”

Mechanically, the two Rebels confirm their instructions and walk away. Soon, Kylo and Hux can hear their boarding shuttle leaving the hangar.

They can’t hear their reinforcement Star Destroyer arriving on the scene but Kylo can feel the minds of the crew, and thrives on the sudden panic that overtakes the Rebels. Next to him, Hux also straightens his spine, a completely unconscious move. He  _ feels _ , Kylo realises. He samples the surge of satisfaction coming from the Star Destroyer after they destroyed the Rebel ship with one fatal shot, and watches the flicker of a smile on Hux’s bloodied lips.

“I’ve got a feeling everything will be alright,”  Hux muses and Kylo finally understands. 

Hux has the Force, and he doesn’t have the faintest idea. Not when he’s smiling down at Kylo, completely oblivious to his own brilliance.

“That was a fine Force wizardry you pulled,” he says. Kylo can’t move but his urge to laugh was never stronger. Hux must think Kylo did that - that it was Kylo who manipulated the Rebels into following Hux’s words!

Kylo mentally recounts all the little bits of extraordinary there are to Hux and can’t believe how he never noticed the clear picture they form together. Hux’s ability to inspire, to manipulate, to sway one person or a thousands of them to see things the way he does. The smoothly running machine he creates out of individual cogs. 

Also, the fact that Hux apparently cares for him. Kylo doesn't know what surprises him more. 

And then Hux is calling for a medical team, and Kylo is losing his consciousness, and all life-altering realisations will have to wait.

 

*

 

“No, I most certainly do not.”

Two second ago, Hux was sitting next to Kylo on the non-regulation sofa he insisted on keeping in his quarters, relaxed and as close to lounging as Kylo has ever seen the man. Now he’s standing upright, fury and disappointment spiralling around him in an impenetrable wall. He’s put as much distance between himself and Kylo as he could without looking like running from his own quarters. 

Kylo perches on the edge of the seat, feeling like teetering on the edge of something far more steep and dangerous. Earlier, it seemed as if Hux was willing to speak with him, almost eager to. Clearly Kylo has chosen the wrong topic to broach with him. 

“It’s true, Hux. You do - you have the Force. You’re untrained, it’s raw and so different from my own that I couldn’t see-”

Kylo doesn’t understand Hux’s refusal, the violence of it. Hasn’t the man himself proclaimed his ambition, his hunger for power? What greater power is there in the universe?

“I don’t need a… a  _ religious magic  _ to command the First Order’s armies. I never did!”

Kylo tries to get the point across but the patient words don’t come easily to him, it’s like trying to explain the point of light to a cave creature whose eyes have atrophied. They lack common ground. In the end he settles for what always came easily to him when dealing with Hux - arguing. 

“But you did - unconsciously. You’ve always been using it.”

“I do not owe my accomplishments to some… genetic anomaly!” Hux spits.  

The accusation throws Kylo back into the sofa, his shoulders slumping. He frowns as it finally dawns on him, the root of Hux’s displeasure. The reason for his derision. 

Kylo has been born with this power, destined for greatness. It defined him from the first flicker into consciousness, before he even left his mother’s womb. He grew up with expectations, and became a disappointment. Even at his best he was always compared to someone greater and found lacking. If trusting the Force was a religion, Kylo’s faith was weak.

Hux was born a bastard, the label of unworthiness put on him similarly before he was even born. Not even his father expected much of him, and he surprised everyone. He clawed and backstabbed and built his way up, bolstered by nothing but his faith in himself. 

“Hux,” he stands, finally knowing what to say. How to say it. 

“It’s power, and you command it.”  Then he offers a small smile. “I know it doesn’t look like that from my example but it’s not supposed to be the other way round.”

That stops Hux. For long enough to consider it. Kylo extends his senses, breathes him in. He starts to understand how could Hux have lived so many years right under his nose without him - without Snoke - realising it. 

The popular perception of the Force always boils down to the duality of it. Light, and Dark, the opposites at eternal war. Nobody can walk both paths, a Force user is supposed to choose a side.  

But where Ben’s clinging to light was always shadowed with the dark and where Kylo’s immersion in the dark was always streaked with flashes of light, Hux’s Force is much quieter. 

It’s not light, there isn’t enough compassion in Hux for him to even look kindly at a fellow being, not to mention wish for their well-being. Even the  _ something _ he feels for Kylo is not selfless. It’s part lust, part codependency, a cry for companionship, an affinity to one fixed point in a changing time. Hux cares for him because even Kylo at his worst is better than uncertainty. 

And it’s not even dark, not in the sense of that living darkness that sometimes threatens to swallow Kylo whole, fear and anger and hate overflowing in sparks at his fingertips. There’s a peculiar madness to Hux in that he’s almost incapable of fear - yes, he can get frightened, but he bounces back in no time, his core refusing to cower. His anger is a fizzling, superficial thing, he clings to his outward image too tightly to ever truly rage. Hate - that’s a different matter, but Hux’s hate has hollowed a planet and drained a sun, he doesn’t waste it on lightning. 

Hux’s dark is merely the absence of light, and his light is just the gleam of day filtered through clouds heavy with rain. 

Hux is still standing there, thinking deep. Suddenly, as if he senses Kylo feeling around his edges, he recoils and shakes his head. 

“No. I will not be your apprentice or anything else you’ve conjured in that deranged brain of yours.” 

He makes it to the door, almost has his hand on the controls, when he halts. Kylo can hear his turning, the squeak of soles on polished floor. He keeps his gaze down. Rule number one in dealing with wild animals: don’t threaten them. Kylo has been told his eyes can be too demanding. 

“You didn’t stop me.” Hux sounds puzzled. As if he genuinely expected Kylo to wrap an invisible chokehold around his neck, to drag him back, heels scuffling the floor.

Kylo sighs silently, just a long breath lifting his shoulders before slumping again. 

“I haven’t used the Force against you in years, Hux.”

“But you never had any qualms doing it when I was just an asset to you, so forgive me for expecting the same treatment now,” Hux sneers again. 

Kylo keeps his eyes down as he walks over to him, Hux still waiting, mad pride keeping his spine straight. 

“Having the Force doesn’t put you under me, or make you my property,” he tells him. Lifts his gaze high enough to focus on that mouth, perfectly cut and bluish pink in the chill of the room. He think of his own blood on it. Then he smirks.

“But if you choose it… I’m sure I’d enjoy the arrangement.”

The backhand across his mouth is vicious and delectable, his torn lip throbbing with pain in time with his heartbeat, and his blood tastes perfect when licked from Hux’s lips. 

**Author's Note:**

> I had to orphan the original fic written for the Exchange because I got a little despairy over it. 
> 
> I liked the concept, though, and decided to rework it a little and keep it here.


End file.
